"Daybreak on the reservation," Arizona/Utah, March 2010

Daybreak on the reservation

I'm not sure I've experienced a place any more peaceful and spectacular as Monument Valley at daybreak.

"To go into solitude," Colorado, May 2006

To go into solitude

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

"To the horizon," Wyoming, May 2006

To the horizon

"If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame," Counting Crows, "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby"

"Elk Antler Arch, Jackson, Wyoming," May 2006

Elk Antler Arch, town square, Jackson, Wyoming

When my college roommate, Bryan, and I celebrated the year we turned 30 in 2006, we met in Denver for a road trip through the Rockies. He requested nights in Boulder and Jackson and I planned a loop trip through those towns and up into Idaho and Montana before we made our way back to Denver. We hit states we hadn't ever visited and got to national parks I'd long ached to see, namely Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone.

In Jackson, where we spent two nights to allow for a full day touring Yellowstone, we found a hotel near the center of town and walked through the town square on our way to a nice dinner one evening. Entering and exiting the square, we passed through these archways made of elk antlers.

Now that my photo a day project is complete, in order to keep this blog fresh (and perhaps as another resolution), I'm going to shoot for participation in each of this year's Photo Friday challenges, at the least. Hopefully, I'll be able to post one photo a month that is either taken specifically for the challenge or was taken within the past few months, rather than relying on my archives for each one. (And if I can scan in my film negatives with any regularity, perhaps one photo a month will be one from way back.)

So away we go.

Day 198 of 365

The most amazing cloud I've ever seen

After we drove through the storm in western Pennsylvania, the skies cleared over Ohio and as we rounded a bend on I-80, this massive cumulus hovered above us.

Day 136 of 365

Barrely, the construction mascot

Casey was driving and the traffic was slow enough to get this shot.

"Pepsi sign, Brush, Colorado," May 2006

Pepsi sign, Brush, Colorado

I take a lot of pictures of signs, but this one I particularly like. It immediately takes me back there -- a warm, sunny day in small-town northeast Colorado May, the soft clouds dotting a blue sky. The refreshing thought of a soda to quench my thirst. Remove the cars, put it in sepia, and it could be an ad from the 50s.

"Rest stop," Colorado, May 2006

Rest stop

Just before taking this picture, I eagerly looked at the long open road ahead of me. The flat Colorado plateau provided no places to hide -- no speed traps. I checked the mirror, and the route from whence we came was likewise devoid of witnesses.

And with that, I gunned the Sebring up to 100 mph, just for a moment. Truth be told, I panicked a moment when I looked in the rear-view mirror and thought I saw the flashing lights of a patrol car back in the distance. As I slowed, I realized that it was merely the sun glinting off a car. It also occurred to me that the car was so far behind us that there's no way a patrolman behind the wheel could accurately determine our speed (or at least have it hold up in traffic court).

But then the setting sun heightened the golden light and shadows on the landscape and I had to pull over for a brief rest. I walked out to the middle of the road for a few pictures, including this one, before we continued our trip across the lonely landscape toward the sun.

"Little Bighorn National Cemetery," Montana, May 2006

White Man Runs Him

The white (x 2)tombstone of one of Custer's Indian scouts at the Little Bighorn National Cemetery at the national park of the same name in Montana.

"Trucks at dusk," Montana, May 2006

Trucks at dusk

As dusk fell over I-90 on a late-spring day in 2006, my college roommate and I drove east from Bozeman, on our way to Billings for the night. The road was open beneath the big sky, a few trucks speeding in each direction. As we passed them, their radio frequencies would momentarily interrupt the signal from my iPod to the radio, and our song would cut out and a word or two of truck lingo might creep in.

Made in Maine, May '08: Perched on the rocks at Portland Head

Perched on the rocks at Portland Head

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
and on its outer point, some miles away,
the lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
in the white tip and tremor of the face.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,
with strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

No one alone: from each projecting cape
And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.

Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night o'er taken mariner to save.

And the great ships sail outward and return
Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn
They wave their silent welcome and farewells.

They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.

The mariner remembers when a child,
on his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink
And when returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same,
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!

It sees the ocean to its bosum clasp
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace:
It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp,
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece.

The startled waves leap over it; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain,
And steadily against its solid form
press the great shoulders of the hurricane.

The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din
of wings and winds and solitary cries,
Blinded and maddened by the light within,
Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.

A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock,
Still grasping in his hand the fire of love,
it does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock,
but hails the mariner with words of love.

"Sail on!" it says: "sail on, ye stately ships!
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse.
Be yours to bring man neared unto man.

-- The Lighthouse
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Made in Maine, May '80: On the point at Pemaquid

Vantage point

I must've shot this lighthouse more than any other, with every camera I've ever owned, beginning with my first -- a Kodak disk point-and-shoot. It may be 500 miles from where I grew up, but I have to have photographed it more than Twin Lights or Sandy Hook, only minutes from home. But those, I'd visit on a whim, not always with a camera, and I always knew I could go back at any time to shoot them. At Pemaquid, I always start from behind the light, walking from the parking lot toward the tower, then make my way down to the rocks and around the point, covering it from every angle. It's a tradition, a ritual, one I expect to continue on future visits.

Made in Maine, May '08: Churning sea at Pemaquid Point

Churning sea at Pemaquid Point

The weather during our trip was amazing. When we left Bar Harbor on this morning, it looked like this. During the three-hour drive, we passed through some intermittent as well as steady rain. When we arrived at Pemaquid, we had blue skies and wispy clouds above a surging ocean.

After leaving Pemaquid, it began raining again, but stopped shortly after we arrived at my uncle's house an hour later (with a stop at Round Top for ice cream).

Then we had clear skies again, for the most part.

Made in Maine, May '08: Boardwalk in the woods

Boardwalk in the Maine woods

Most of the western side of Jordan Pond is a delicate ecosystem, so boards have been laid for hikers. Casey and I stepped aside onto a rock at one point because three sullen teens were gaining on us -- one had her iPod blaring in order to keep out the annoying sounds of the calm forest -- and let them pass. Their parents soon followed, apologizing.

"I promised them ice cream at the end," their father said.

"We're following you, too!" I replied.

"The Nebraska road," May 2006

The Nebraska road

Nebraska Route 71 seems infinite, a straight line to the horizon, disappearing over the slightest bulge in the landscape, no doubt continuing straight on the other side.

"On the old highways of America"

The road to myself

"On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk -- times neither day nor night -- the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself."

-- William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways

"In the country," Montana, May 2006

Sepia-toned history

For Photo Friday.

"Blame it on the Tetons," May 2006

In Wyoming, May 27, 2006

On an overcast late-May day in northwestern Wyoming, the clouds hang low over the Grand Tetons, which dwarf the bison grazing in the fields. I have no shortage of images that would fit the category of "peaceful," but most are stored away on negatives in albums on a shelf in the spare bedroom. My grand plan to sort through the vast -- albeit mostly mediocre -- archives and try my hand at scanning them in has yet to begin.

I can already picture some of the, well, pictures that would work for this theme. There's one of me sitting on a rock, looking out over a frozen pond deep in the Maine winter. There's Notre Dame's grotto at night, the candles illuminating the rocks in the alcove in a soft, yellow light. There are numerous snowscapes in which you can feel the cold and sense the silence of the muffled scene.

Just one more item for the to-do list.

"Inside the kitchen," Wyoming, May 2006

Inside the kitchen, originally uploaded by DC Products.

The destruction inside an abandoned cafe and rest stop on a rural Wyoming highway.

"Thin air of the Rockies," May 2006

"Thin air of the Rockies," May 2006

Cruising up in the thin air of the Rockies.